Gamers Play Alan Wake In Haunted Station

I don't usually get excited about the marketing efforts that promote video games, but the effort to hype Alan Wake is very impressive. We're following the amazing Bright Falls series of promo films closely, and this morning, let me point you to another pre-release promotion. This one features six gamers playing the dark horror game in Quarantine Station, "the most haunted site in Australia," in order to study their reactions.

"The aim was to measure the immersive nature of Alan Wake by observing the impact the game had on the physiological responses of six test subjects.

Enlisting the help of leading neuroscientists and using sophisticated standardized methodology that links to the world’s largest Brain database, we made some exciting observations"

Those observations include the fact that test subjects showed increased heart-rates while playing a spooky game in a spooky place, and that ad-science is funny. Lest you come to any unwarranted conclusions, the website concludes:

"More controlled studies are needed to determine the precise impact of the Alan Wake on brain-body stimuli."

I'm sure our top scientists are already working on it.

Alan Wake comes out on May 18, and my completely unscientific advice for you is to get it because it's really, really scary/fun.